Facebook Censoring OffG’s Links
OffG Editor
One of our readers recently brought something rather alarming to our attention via Facebook. It seems that certain of our articles, when shared, are not visible to anyone but the person who shared them. He sent us these examples:
Apparently, our content goes against Facebook’s “community standards”. These are long, and rambling, but we can assume they’re referring to this section:
Even more worryingly, when he tried to click these links he was presented with this:
Facebook won’t let him visit our site, not even from a link he himself shared.
Facebook are claiming to “empower people to chose for themselves”, whilst actually totally removing this choice from people’s lives. Very bizarre. Quite frightening.
Further, upon getting this news we checked out our social media set up and found that our articles no longer share to facebook. The set-up has always been that freshly published articles automatically share to Facebook – where we have thousands of followers, many of whom may only have access to OffG from that platform. That no longer happens.
An interesting fact in this case: all the links Tom attempted to share were regarding Ukraine and/or MH17.
Just last month Facebook announced they were hiring Kateryna Kruk as their “public policy manager for Ukraine”, saying her job will mainly involve “combatting Russian disinformation”.
For those of you who don’t know, Kruk (pronounced “crook”?), is a Ukrainian “political activist”, “analyst” and “social media journalist”. She rose to prominence in 2013 when, fresh out of the Soros-funded Central European University, she started tweeting about the Maidan. She tweeted so well that, one year later, the Atlantic Council gave her a prize for it.
Since then she has written for many outlets – including the Atlantic Council and The Guardian – gone on to work for the new coup-government of Ukraine in several minor administrative positions, and been given a fellowship by the European Values think tank.
She also openly celebrated the Odessa Massacre.
Here is Facebook’s newest disinfo warrior cheering the 2014 Odessa fire — where nearly 50 Ukrainians were killed by fascist and far-right “activists” — as an action that “cleaned” the city of “terrorists.” Yikes. pic.twitter.com/xowHNYDDcY
— Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) June 3, 2019
Oh and she works for StopFake too, who have form when it comes to objecting to our existence.
Interesting coincidence.
We encourage all of our readers, who are on Facebook, to investigate this. Is it only certain topics and links? Is it all of our articles? Feel free to tell us about it in the comments below, or contact us by email or through social media…but probably not Facebook.
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It may not be related, but I’ve found that since you re-vamped the site, only rarely can I print articles off. Perhaps it depends on which computer I use in the library, but only a couple of times have I managed to get the print preview to load, which you need or else the print will “fail”.
Anyone else had this problem?
Try using Reader View (in Firefox and clones) and printing from there.
The door has been opened to eliminate and hide all content with bad reputation. Once people are on board for that, convinced by ‘prototypes’ where everyone agrees they’re bad the damage is already done. Censorship becomes a good thing despite the occasional error which of course should be corrected.
Now , creating good and bad reputation is the business of PR so one can imagine a lot of people with clout being on board with this war on fake news . One can disagree to what this is mere opportunism and to what extent these people are the main driving force. I tend slightly towards the latter. One can be certain that lot of people will go along with the best and most sincere intentions.
Why don’t you simply consider a life without FB? Fruit trees have to be pruned at times, even if it affects the harvest at the beginning.
I just saw a post from you on Facebook right now. It featured a link to YouTube and said:
I also saw a post from you (or was it Catte?) last weekend warning us about your DoS troubles.
We’re not totally banned on FB, we’re having certain articles blocked and censored – as stated above. No idea how many, or why some and not others.
” the Atlantic Council gave her a prize for it.”
They truly are Satan’s disciples, no doubt left whatsoever.
So Facebook’s into full bore nazi-style book-burning now with the crooked Kruk creature?
You’re using several different names under the same email address. We don’t want to be controlling, but we do discourage that as it can seem like trolling
I Have to say its concerning that you track & store any info from posters! Which you must be doing to be certain of your assertion.
What does it matter if its a troll, if you believe in freedom of expression & beliefs?
Not so sure this site is much different to the Guardian or Facebook in its ideology, i’ve noticed this site has in the past delayed my own comments for censorship before.
Errrr….the poster in question posted FOUR comments on the same page inside an hour using the same email and a different name. You don’t need to be tracking anything to notice that. You just need to be a Moderator who’s awake 🙂
As a matter of fact we store no data about posters whatsoever, aside from their email address (if they subscribe to us). We are even taking steps to make IPs invisible to moderators.
As to moderating your comments – you’re entirely WRONG. We never censor for opinion, and if a comment goes missing it’s due to circumstances beyond our control. Fortunately that’s likely to be less of a problem now we don’t use the native WordPress software, which was incredibly glitchy in our experience.
And if you think we’re no different from the Guardian – try posting similar criticism of them there.
Good luck with that : – D
Sheesh, I suggest you take my comments on content, not on titles. (books and covers and things) If it bothers you so, then ban me. Why not? Perhaps you have too much ‘trolling’ hysteria on the brain. It’s understandable.
Frankly, I have more than enough agita from witnessing mainstream censorship at work, where I never comment (who needs it?). If you want to join that club, well, then so be it. Your choice, not mine.
PS: I just counted 7 of my nome de plumes, not 4, so there you have it.
I try to create a title that adds to the flavor of the post, very simple.
It’s your blog, do with it what you will. As they say; consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Anyway, banned or not – kudos to you and yours.
Calm down. We don’t ban people. You were just politely asked not to use multiple names. One of the few ‘rules’ we expect people to observe.
Thanks for complying
“I just counted 7 of my nome de plumes, not 4…”
Only 7? Then who the hell is “Twat-I-Am”?
Trust me I have experience of guardian censorship. Why do you think I found this site.
As for facebook, I would never subscribe to such an invasion of privacy.
But what of freedoms of expression, speech & use of as many email addresses as you like?
Privacy is freedom & good to hear you hide IP addies.
Here’s one to give your paranoia arseholes: what if Off-Guardian don’t track you but a “Global Passive Adversary” (tech talk) working on channels and side-channels outside the Off-Guardian does? And records every single bit of it? Forever? Even easier for any such GPA now that every post here is timestamped. Forever.
You know what informed paranoia is? It’s not paranoia, its intelligently precautionary behaviour. You know what uninformed paranoia is? It’s over the top, off the wall, time and energy wasting stupidity.
Are there any ways to make a GPA’s task at least a little bit harder? Yes there are. Would you even begin to know how to formulate some or, worst case, where to look the rudiments of some of them up? On the face of it: not fucking likely.
Sometimes censorship is warranted of course, take your reply as another fine example of a classic troll, still one mans troll is another mans devils advocate.
live & let live I say.
“live & let live I say.”
Then if you won’t adress the point, at least leave the Off-Guardian editors alone until you have gathered clear and uneqivocal evidence that they are lying in their teeth when they state their posting policy. Vicious, scurrilous, unsubstantiated defamations that are intended (yes, intended) to sow doubt on their integrity don’t make you look like a “troll” (to use your word), they make you look like a vicious, scurrilous little shit on a mission (or maybe a mi$$ion) to damage their enterprise.
Found the ignore button
The most interesting thing about “controlling” is its superficial adversarial position vis-a-vis “trolling”.
The most interesting thing about your post is how absolutely everyone is out to get you again. They delay your comments because their technology falls asleep storing the same old same old parznoid content in its database.
Well that’s a classic example of trolling, well done you.
Well, I think of it as artistic license but if you say so. Point taken.
Facebook claims to be a platform, rather than a publisher. However, its censorship shows it to be a publisher. As such, it should be held to the standards, with all the liabilities, that apply to other publishers.
Facespook is a social engineering psyop.
alternatively, just close your fakebook account.
You’ll be amazed at how liberated you feel. I didn’t even use mine more than a couple of times a month, but since deleting it (for the 2nd time) I haven’t missed it once..I don’t have to listen to all of my faux-liberal mates telling me how awful Facebook is for doing x, y, z; but they’re still telling me this ON FACEBOOK ffs.
In Ukraine, it’s now called FascistBook.
I closed my FB account when I signed up. A popup said: “Wrong Button. Fuck Off.” Very embarrasing. Now I have no friends.
To what extent is Facebook Zionist controlled given that Israeli has a huge program to block criticism of Zionist crimes?
Revealing use of language by our virtuous Facebook guardians:
“disrupting economic incentives” – as if people could only have economic incentives.
“independent third-party fact-checkers” – totally objective souls of course!
And the biggest howler (which needs a comment every few words):
“Empowering people (ooh sexy right-on language!) to decide for themselves (by withholding choice from them?) what to read, trust and share by informing them with more context (whose context?) and promoting news literacy (i.e. ‘properly educate’ them).”
Madison Avenue gobbledegook. It’s enough to make you puke.
Try interacting with that blur of phenomena that isn’t on a screen and sooner that you might imagine pseudo-information like this will be meaningless and disappear.
Obviously time for an off-Facebook?
Seriously, all that’s happening is that the material contradicts the Party Line. Its called “Community Standards” these days because it sounds more kumbaya, they’re upholding Truth, Justice and the American Way (&tc.) but its really just good old-fashioned censorship.
(OG is likely to go through a period of trial and tribulation because its content tends to be a bit contrarian, its only a matter of time before we read news articles about it being financed with the contemporary equivalent of Moscow Gold.)
yeah!
down in the presstitute cesspool known as the Fraudian they’ve just about done away with reader comments
the few sh*t articles open for ‘comment’ are now being pre-censored (‘moderated)
but you can always giv ’em an earful via ‘Report’
HAAAAAAAAA!!!!
The Guardian used to be my favourite Newspaper. I have no respect for it now.
“Since then she has written for many outlets – including the Atlantic Council and The Guardian – ” This is a hilarious combination because the Atlantic Council is about as “Full Spectrum Dominance” as you can get. The G. can obviously not reject her, but that organisation is about as sus as you can get outside the Soros organisations.
I am not on Facebook so I cannot test the links. But I can direct your attention to the following: It no longer matters what the truth content of an article or message is, only how someone got it.
It is quite clearly shooting the messenger and sooner or later, everybody who ignores the message content will cause big trouble for himself/themselves/ others.
Where someone spreads lies, take them to court. Where someone spreads the truth just look at how they came to know it?
1. Julian Assange
2. Witness K/Timor Leste scandal
3. Newscorp journalist (Canberra) raided 4th June 2019
4. Australian Broadcasting Corporation raided 5th June 2019
They all got in the way of military propaganda.
“Oh and she works for StopFake too, who have form when it comes to objecting to our existence.”
which links to an article headlined
“Russian trolls exiled from Guardian find home for their hate”
Hey! Steady on, “StopFake”! I now read and post here far more than I find is worth the totally shite experience of reading and posting to the hegemon’s favourite fifth column slime dump a.k.a the Guardian. Nofuckingbody has fucking exiled me from the Guardian. I have just come to so fucking hate its fucking travesty of “news”, decent human behaviour and practically everyfuckingthing fucking else that fucking constitutes social fucking responsibilty for anyone except maybe that of the lowest fucking lumpen fucking proletariate orders of sofuckingcalled socialfuckingdemocraticfuckingciety that I came here all by expletive deleted self. And I didn’t fucking have to fucking ask them or pussy fucking foot around any fucking hypocritically bullshitting sociopolitical censorship dressed up as freefuckingdom of comment either–I just post what I fucking want here and they fucking publish it. So back fucking off, you doublearsed, mendacious fucking shit spreading kunts.
Robbo….. Am almost floored by your profound eloquence! However ‘travesty of news’ would almost be an understatement. And yeah, I come here too and comment coz… 1) am not censored, 2) am not abused by some reactionary pro empire or frothing zionist troll, and 3) nearly everyone here is not a brainwashed zombie…. Oh, and also, you get helpful tips or constructive feedback from other commenters as well.
fucking right
Are we Russian trolls? I guess it’s better than being lost souls.
The ‘expletive deleted’ looked promising. Also i’m hoping my post gets a cool avatar.
“…i’m hoping my post gets a cool avatar.”
Then look to your email address.
My email address is fine…
I was just dropping a ‘lurking note’. I’m a regular visitor because I’m keeping a close watch on ‘the war on fake news’.
I approve of this avatar.
Slowly but surely, the Internet is being censored so that only ‘acceptable’ content is allowed. The question is,….. ‘acceptable’ to whom?
I can answer your question. To those who champion military propaganda leading to WW3. Or they would not fight these:
1. Julian Assange
2. Witness K/Timor Leste scandal
3. Newscorp journalist (Canberra) raided 4th June 2019
4. Australian Broadcasting Corporation raided 5th June 2019
5. ??? tomorrow is 6th June – who’s on tomorrow???
They all got in the way of military propaganda. The truth content of the messages did not matter, only how they got hold of it.
not us.
Acceptable to the Dark Side. Isn’t it the Bible that says somewhere that Satan will come disguised as the Savior, or some such kernel of wisdom?
The Bible is just “Gobbledegook”, put out by the World’s Largest Paedophile Sanctuary…..
Discerning folks left Wastebook years ago.
Readers might be interested in an article on the Grayzone website by Ben Norton concerning Kruk. The link is https://thegrayzone.com/2019/06/04/facebook-public-policy-manager-ukraine-kateryna-kruk/#more-9980
We are living the dream. The American dream……too bad it’s turned into an Orwellian nightmare.
Indeed, the “New American Century” has begun and the lunatics – John Bolton etc – are in charge of the asylum.
Bolton is a deranged psychopath….They say that Cream rises to the top, but, so do Psychopaths, in the Military Industrial Complex anyway……
“They call it the American Dream because you’ve got to be asleep to believe it”. George Carlin
Facebook is such a government tool. They’ve even just hired some Ukrainian member of one of their major neo-fascist parties as a censor. Talk about stinking, festering fetid swamps of debauchery and deceit. I’m speechless over it all.
“I’m speechless over it all.”
I’m not.
I’m finding this to be true with Norton security software also. It will block most Russian and other country sites. It will also block articles written in Amerika about Russia. I guess I’ll close my account with Norton and go with Russian software for computer protection. I don’t do faceborg or other media.
Try Kaspersky and Yandex while they are not yet verboten.
we use ESET at work. Used it for years. It’s great and very light. It’s not Russian, though I’m afraid…Slovakian I think
As an aside, I haven’t used anti-virus software for years, but I do run a firewall (Zone Alarm, which is free) and occasionally scan the (windows) system for malware (with Malwarebytes, also free). Probably the kiss of death saying it, but I’ve never had any issues. Oh, I browse using Sea Monkey, which probably also helps. Full disclosure – I don’t have any affiliation to any of the software mentioned 😉
I was never happy about the idea of submitting to the authority of an unaccountable corporation in California, hence I never created an account with the social-networking site in question. This sort of censorship is exactly what I predicted would happen years ago, yet many otherwise intelligent people seem to ignore this elephant in the room, assuming naïvely that it is all benign until it is too late (because they have become so dependent).
Far better to engage with the www directly by creating your own website, without being subject to censorship by third parties.
Unless you are technically savvy and enjoy doing a lot of low level, 24/7, technical spadework combatting often very intricate vandalisms then, if your site contains any “controversial” social or political content that’s accessed by more than a few family and friends, be careful to select a reliable, preferably off-iiiii-shore hosting service with good technical support (inbuilt and as required) and a robust attitude to meritless takedown demands. And not DIY unless your ISP has most of the above qualities.
The hosting service I use is very affordable and indeed fits the category of having “a robust attitude to meritless takedown demands” (although it does require a small degree of competence in understanding SFTP, the means of saving files on the www). Maybe that is because it has the words “free” and “speech” in its name!
Just my personal Pennith worth, but people are leaving FB in droves or at least not using their accounts anymore. I left a few years ago and only spent a brief time there. In my circles this Social media platform for disseminating information has been deemed no longer representative and only certain demographics are still using it. (I don’t have anything to back that up) Source wise other than the trends I see in my daily grind.
Young people have long since moved away from it and it is more a haunt of older people (and I am not being derogatory to our Older readership in saying that!) using it to keep in touch with family and friends in far away lands. Again, thats just my humble opinion and how I keep up with social media trends in the case of disseminating information in my everyday life to my target audience.
It is, I agree disconcerting, that the censorship algorithms are dictating what narrative is to be followed, discussed and debated and not surprising either.
I agree with Loverat, that these are having an obvious reaction in terms of interactions with readers here. I would make the assumption, that not all of your readership stems from linkage to FB, so would conclude that it is a multi-pronged approach to shutting the Off G tap on multiple levels, not just FB.
The conclusion is, you need to be ahead of the curve and find other ways to connect with those who are seeking an alternative news sources, because of their discontent with the current status quo. Perhaps an a more in-depth analysis of FB and it’s affiliates would be an interesting angle to explore!
There’s a perception FB is now just the haunt of bereft men and childless cat ladies trying find ways to celebrate their loneliness as a life choice, but that seems like a harsh generalisation. Lots of young people still on there. I can personally attest
Just a basic observation and one which will be confirmed by visitor numbers these last 3 weeks – the comments on the articles appear very thin on the ground lately.
In the Northern summer people tend to be outside. The new system can also clog your email box with answers. Probably better to come back when you want to instead of getting all replies.
Our visitor numbers haven’t been affected by any recent activity against us. Our Alexa ranking remains steadily ascending. Comments – hard to say. They dropped back a bit during the DoS attack, but the numbers can vary considerably day to day even at normal times.
Facebook isn’t a source of traffic we depend on.
Perhaps we shouldn’t allow ourselves to find this “frightening”, so much as infuriating.
Speaking personally, when I get infuriated enough, I am more likely to do something about moral crime.
“Frightening” is what FB’s owners want us to consider such cheap, superficial censorship tricks to be.
I can’t claim to know much about the Ukraine, I’ve certainly met some very nice people from there, and the Ukraine girls really knock me out 😉 but I am confused. On one hand, I hear it is some kind of epicentre of neo-Nazi culture, and all the unpleasantness that implies, but then on the other hand about a month ago I saw the cover of the Jewish Chronicle with a headline celebrating the fact that both the President and Prime Minister of the Ukraine are Jewish, as of the most recent elections, which was some kind of first. Seems an odd makeup, somewhat.
Then there is the mystery of MH17. Brendon O Connell is convinced that this was the work of Bibi, and whatever folk think of him, he has done a lot of research and is very bright. All very strange
Brendon O Connell channel – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjgMgpXmEI5EJSJGjSntWxA
Soros, Atlantic Council, Guardian, that’s all you need to know.
Someone who celebrates maybe as many as 100 people being burned and clubbed to death by Nazi paramilitaries decides upon “community standards.”
“as many as 100 people being burned and clubbed to death by Nazi paramilitaries decides upon “community standards.”
Those are their community standards, and the sooner the rubes get the message the better! The amount of Mexican drug cartel killing action on CrackBook is eye-opening..they don’t give a fuck unless you are trying to shed light on a cabal crime
I tried a few links to articles here from FB and they worked OK.
…..having said that, it migth only take a few extra twists before OffG gets completely banned from FB or simply heavily censored….
‘Machine learning’…really??….learning from who???
If FB hired “Crook” what else can you expect??!!
“Tell me with whom you walk with and I will tell you who you are.” — Spanish proverb.
“Machine learning’…really??….learning from who???”
From themselves. Really. And if it were suggested to them, or they just deciced to do it themselves, they could increasingly easily identify and erase any of the anthropocentric bias that creeps into human programmed and/or moderated filters. binra can’t even spell Descartes yet. Really.
It is abundantly clear that it is the – “truth” itself – that “violates” Facebook’s “community standards.”
Have reported this to Facebook? She should be terminated immediately. Did they even do a background check? That Odessa comment is subhuman.
FB reply: “Oh Joe, Oh Joe…Subhumans are exactly what we are looking for….”
I shut down my facebook account a few years ago.
The way to counter this is to get people to leave Facebook for a newer, community-minded social media platform.
Things funded by IPO will always end up controlled lock, stock and barrel by globalists.
Ditto. Why should we fund the bastards!
Where is Off Guardian’s VK handle and Telegram link?
We currently have no presence on VK – but we may be getting one
Please do, it can’t hurt your online presence.
In the I’m OK because I use the “JuJu Realtime Anti-Fuckuover Shield” holding cell awaiting a better excuse.